The Crater

"So how did your parents tell you that you were adopted?” It’s the first thing I’m asked, almost every time. Hollywood would have you believe that there has to be some big, dramatic production; that they sit you down on your 18th birthday, and reveal they've been hiding something from you your entire life.

Yeah...it's not like that.

The honest answer is, I've known for as long as I can remember. Having been adopted at only a few weeks old, I don't know anything else. The same is true for my older brother, who was also adopted shortly after his birth, four years before me. Though I can't speak for the experience of all adopted kids, in our household the fact we were adopted was celebrated. My parents were always extremely open about it, happy to answer questions we had as we grew up. Adoption was what made our family complete, it wasn't something to be ashamed of or to hide from others.

So, no, there wasn't one specific moment where my mom and dad had a heart-to-heart with me, no soap opera worthy discovery about my true origins. What I do remember though, from as far back as my memory will take me, is the story of how I came to be in the family. Not the real story...at least, not exactly. It's hard to explain to a very small child what adoption is when they don't even know where babies come from "normally". But my parents came up with a sweet, fantastical bedtime story about my arrival into the family with enough nuggets of truth to get the point across.

“Once upon a time, there was a little boy named James who lived in Slidell, Louisiana. One day, he was sitting in the living room on the old green leather couch, all alone because he had no brothers or sisters to play with. Then, all of a sudden, he heard the sound of something falling through the sky. With a crash, it broke through the roof and landed in the living room right in front of him, causing a giant crater in the floor!”

After years of trying, my parents accepted the fact they couldn't have children naturally (or, so they thought - but more on that later). They both really wanted to be parents, and I can only imagine how difficult that time must have been for them both. Eventually, they decided to pursue adoption, and in time brought home my brother James. After a few years, they decided they wanted to adopt another child, and one day they got the call about me.

“Inside the crater, James could hear the sound of something crying. So, he climbed down, and at the bottom he found a baby girl!”

The day they got to pick me up, it was really important to them for James to feel included in the process. He got to go in first, and was the first one in the family to hold me. He's pretty proud of that fact, I think, even today.

“She was an angel who fell from heaven to be his baby sister. James was so excited to show his mom and dad the newest addition to the family, the little girl they named Katie.”

There's a photo of the two of us from shortly after I came home. James is holding me on that old, green leather couch (which stayed in our family for decades afterwards), beaming up at the camera. I remember my dad saying it was taken right after I fell in the crater and my angel wings fell off. I don't know how many times I heard that story, but I do remember asking to hear it pretty often. I don't think I believed it in its entirety for very long (I had doubts that a crater could be repaired so easily, and why did I have wings if they didn't even work?). But I still loved to hear it, because it was all about how I joined my family. My real family. It was a story that helped me understand that even though I wasn't biologically related to my family, I was still very much loved.

When I share that I am adopted, another question I get a lot is "are you going to look for your real parents/family?" I never understood that one - I already am part of my real family. Blood on its own really doesn't mean much. Family is about who raises you, who is always there for you, and who loves you unconditionally; and I can promise any skeptics that all those are true in mine.

Five years after my "fall from heaven", our family was truly completed with the arrival of my little brother, Billy. Nothing short of a medical miracle, my parents had the shock of a lifetime when they got pregnant at 41, and had a healthy baby boy. I didn't love that I was no longer the baby of the family, but in time I learned to appreciate being a big sister. Though, compared to mine, his birth story is pretty boring; I mean, he didn't come out of a crater, after all.